


She Walks By (& I Feel Serene)

by ygrainette



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Anna-centric, Background Dean/Cas, Coming Out, Coming of Age, F/F, Femslash February, First Time, Happy Ending, POV Ruby, Past Anna Milton/Dean Winchester, Ruby-centric, everyone is human
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-22
Updated: 2015-02-22
Packaged: 2018-03-14 15:10:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3415382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ygrainette/pseuds/ygrainette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Ruby is a good Catholic girl, and Anna is a troublemaker who rides a motorbike to school. Ruby's never broken a rule in her life, but she's about to find out what happens when you step outside the lines.</p>
            </blockquote>





	She Walks By (& I Feel Serene)

**Author's Note:**

> My first offering for Femslash February 2k15!  
> I've seen a lot of Anna-as-the-good-girl and Ruby-the-rebel, and decided in this case to turn it on its head. After all, Anna is the fallen angel who tore out her own Grace, and Ruby the Most Loyal of all Lilith's demons. So here we are: my inaugural high school AU. I am a Brit, so apologise for any mistakes re: the American high school system.
> 
> I [tumble](http://capricorn-child.tumblr.com), and love feedback with the passion of 1000 fiery suns.
> 
> Content Warning for smoking, homophobia & internalised homophobia.  
> Ruby is 16, Anna is 17.
> 
> [in case anyone is confused, Abby is Abaddon.]

The first time Ruby lays eyes on Anna Milton, she's coming out of the school gym after orientation. It's a beautiful day, clear but crisp, the kind of late-summer morning that promises the arrival of fall. She didn't put on a cardigan this morning and is regretting it, goosepimples rising down her arms under her blouse.

It's the first day of her junior year in a new school and she half feels as though she never left the last: all that's different are the faces of the girls laughing either side of her, the names of her courses, the layout of the campus, the uniform. Everything else is the same. Another two years, to be lived out in the same pattern as the previous sixteen. Seamless.

And that's not bad, it's not. What's familiar is good, is safe. She knows where she is, and what to say, and who she is. Easy.

Ruby glances to one side – no reason, really, a girl to her left saying something about homeroom assignments – and catches sight of her through the crowd.

Tall. Face a white oval framed by shockingly red hair that ripples in the wind. Black leather jacket. Straddling a motorcycle, gleaming in the sun. The girl looks down, and beneath the high-spirited first-day chatter Ruby hears the engine's guttural roar.

"Ruby – come on, we're going to be late –"

"Yes, yes, I'm coming!"

When Ruby looks back, the girl is gone.

* * *

 

For the first few days, Ruby is too busy to wonder. Finding her way around a new school, trying to remember her timetable and where all her classes are and the names to go with all the new faces, that takes all her energy. At times it's overwhelming - some of these kids have known each other since kindergarten, for heaven's sake - but Ruby finds herself melting easily into a group of girls by the end of the first week.

She doesn't know them, of course, but in many ways they're like her friends from before. Her kind of people. Girls her parents and her priest would approve of, even Meg, who Ruby quickly realises half the boys have a crush on, and flirts like it's her natural tongue. She tells Ruby in the girls' bathroom one afternoon that she enjoys the game of it, but she'd never _actually_ go out with any of them.

"The boys here only want one thing," she says warningly, and Ruby nods. It was much the same back at St Anne's. No boys who seemed worth dating at all, even if they would've looked twice at a girl like her.

Still, she thinks she sees Meg's eyes linger on one of the senior guys, a tall boy with dark hair and big blue eyes. He's cute, Ruby supposes. She's never really liked a boy that much before: she can see if they're good looking, but there's supposed to be something more, isn't there? Cute boys are supposed to make you _feel_ something, although Ruby's never quite been sure what.

A couple of weeks into the semester, when they’re having lunch, Abby asks her, "Ruby, which of the guys do you think is hottest?"

She blushes fiercely. "I don't - I don't know."

"Oh, come on, you can tell us." Abby says, tilting her head and smiling, languid and white-toothed. "You've been here long enough to get a good look at all the seniors, there must be _someone_."

"Uhm -"

Abby giggles, her smile going wicked. "Unless it's a _teacher_?"

"What?" Ruby can feel herself going even redder as the other girls break into scandalized giggles.

"Abby, I can't even -"

“That’s _gross_ , ew -”

“Don’t tease her, Abby,” Lilith says, smiling - Lilith is almost always smiling - but shaking her head. “You’re awful.” She leans into Ruby, a hand cool on her arm. “Chill out, honey, you don’t have to tell her.”

But Abby’s _watching_ her, boldly outlined eyes hooded. And there’s a part of Ruby that finds Abby - well - intimidating. She’s gorgeous, not just beautiful like Lilith with her heart-shaped chinadoll face, but sexy. Even in the same school uniform as the rest of them, she looks sophisticated: red hair twisted up on top of her head, skirt long and tight, dramatic 1950s eyeliner, and a look in her pale eyes like she’s seen everything the world has to offer and was not much impressed by any of it.

She doesn’t want Abby to think she’s - stupid or naive or -

“Well, there’s,” she hesitates, casting around in her mind, “there’s that boy - the one in AP English with us, really tall, with the long hair?”

“Oh, yes, I know. Sam Winchester,” Abby almost purrs the name. Then, to Meg: “Isn’t his brother, like, a total deadbeat?”

“Yeah, my dad arrested him _twice_ last summer, for real.” She arches her eyebrows pointedly. “Those two are cute, but they are bad news, girl. Look but don’t touch.”

Ruby nods emphatically. Her father would have an apoplexy if she so much as thought about going out with a boy who might get in trouble with the police. Not that it would ever happen, even if she did like Sam Winchester in that mysterious other way. She’s never been the type to break rules, to push the boundaries. Ruby always plays it safe, and she plans to keep it that way.

* * *

 

Summer has truly turned the corner into fall when Ruby sees her again.

The trees are starting to change their leaves, gold and vermilion slowly creeping in at the edges. As she walks into school with Lilith, arm-in-arm and clutching a paper Starbucks cup apiece, the wind whips through Ruby’s dark wool coat, ruffles the pleats of their uniform skirts. On each inhale the air is sharply cold. It’s any other Wednesday morning, and Ruby is smiling to herself, can’t stop. She loves the autumn.

The girl appears like a mirage.

From behind them they hear a low, rich roar, the crunch of gravel under the weight of tyres, and Ruby turns to see what - and there she comes. Motorcyle a blur, the girl riding it all sharp angles and black leather. Helmet drawn down sightless over her face, hair streaming out behind her in a ferocious red pennant.

She goes by them so close that the slipstream of her passes over Ruby’s upturned face. Streaks past them, then turns and brakes to come to a standstill in the school parking lot, next to the pebble-dashed science building. Jumps down and sweeps her helmet off in a single smooth motion - unzips her jacket to reveal the same cream blouse and charcoal sweater that Ruby and Lilith are wearing. With a sudden jolt Ruby realises the short dark skirt the girl’s wearing over thick black leggings is just the school-regulation one, rolled up far past the point Ruby’s mother would have told her _you’re not going out of this house like that, missy._

The girl runs gloved hands through her hair, shakes it out. It catches in a gust of wind and Ruby wonders, abruptly, how it would feel to the touch, how it would smell if she pressed her nose to it - sweet and floral, or rich and raw -

The girl looks up, and her eyes meet Ruby’s. She smiles, crooked, and winks deliberately. Lifts her fingers to her lips and blows a kiss.

“Ew!” Lilith clutches at her, half-giggling, half-scoffing. “She’s so - ew!”

Ruby swallows hard. The girl bites her lip, then turns and heads inside. She walks with a casual grace hard to believe from someone wearing motorcycle boots. Watching the fluid strength of that motion makes Ruby think of gymnasts, dancers, wild cats.

“Who _is_ that?”

Lilith tugs on her arm, starts them walking again. “Her name’s Anna Milton, and she’s a complete freak.”

Ruby blinks. She hasn’t heard Lilith say a bad word about anyone in all the time she’s been at All Saints’ School, and Lilith took her under her wing practically as soon as she walked in the doors.

“Seriously, Ruby! She cuts class half the time, and she’s really into horror movies and things, like, Satanic stuff, and I think she does drugs, and -” Lilith pauses dramatically while Ruby looks at her wide-eyed, “- she’s a _lesbian_.”

Somehow Ruby’s feet tangle themselves up, and she’d trip if Lilith didn’t have her arm. “Really?” she says, faintly.

“Yes! Everybody knows it. Meg saw her with this girl in town one time, and Luke Nicholas in senior year says it’s true.” Lilith looks over at her, and whatever she sees in Ruby’s face must satisfy her, because she nods, pleased. “I know. Her poor parents. I mean, knowing your kid’s gonna go to Hell, can you _imagine_?”

For a moment it looks like she wants a response. And Ruby - she can’t. She just can’t think of a single thing. Everything she could say is locked up tight in her chest, and she can’t reach any of it.

Then Lilith glances at her watch, and squeals. “Come on, it’s nearly nine, we’ll be late!”

Ruby lets herself be dragged away.

* * *

 

Halfway through the semester, Ruby transfers into the senior art class on her favourite teacher’s recommendation. It’s a little like the first day of school all over again - walking into a room full of faces she doesn’t recognise, hoping she doesn’t make a fool of herself. Actually, it’s even more nerve-wracking, because as she sits down with her sketchbooks and her favourite charcoal pencils, she looks at all the older kids preparing their art school portfolios and knows she has something to prove.

She opens her sketchbook. Smooths out the magazine cuttings she’s using as reference pictures. Does her best to lose herself in the motion of her fingers, the sweep and smudge of charcoal dark over heavy paper.

The door to the art room bangs open and Ruby jumps, knocking her knees against the table.

“Sorry, Miss Adams, didn’t realise I was running late.”

It’s her. It’s Anna Milton. Larger than life. Walking into the classroom all long legs and rippling loose hair. She looks around, sees the empty seat opposite Ruby, hooks her ankle around the chair leg to pull it out, and sits down.

“You’re new here, right? I’m Anna.”

“I know,” Ruby says stupidly. Instantly she feels herself go bright red as the other girl raises a questioning eyebrow. “I mean - I - I’m Ruby.”

“Well, hello, Ruby.” Anna smiles. Up close her face is delicate and somehow sad-looking, hazel eyes huge and dominating her fine-boned features, and the slow crooked grin transforms her. Like sunlight breaking through mist.

“Hello.” Ruby’s still blushing. Still staring. Can’t make herself stop.

Anna leans over the bench to look at Ruby’s sketches. “That’s cool. Nice work.”

There’s a fine silver stud through her left eyebrow. Another glinting in her tongue. Her eyelashes are as red as her hair.

“Thanks,” Ruby says, and the way Anna looks up at her through those auburn lashes makes her stomach turn over, hot and tight.

* * *

 

After that, Anna seems to be everywhere Ruby turns. Walking down the halls, large black headphones cradling her skull, nodding along to the music. Smirking and snapping her gum as she gets yelled at by the teachers and the nuns for violating the uniform code. Sitting in the library with Sam Winchester, the both of them reading HP Lovecraft. Leaning against the side of the science building, watching everyone else go to class or to chapel, a roll-up cigarette at her lips. Riding her motorbike into and out of school, hair flying free.

She smiles when she sees Ruby. Sometimes winks, sometimes blows a bubble of red gum at her, sometimes throws her a salute.

Ruby’s friends say, _ew gross_ , and _she’s such a freak, oh my gosh,_ and _why do they even let that lesbo in this school,_ and as they tug her away Ruby can’t tear her eyes from Anna’s.

* * *

 

As the days grow shorter and shorter, and the air gets colder and colder, Ruby's parents fight more and more. They moved out to Kansas from New Hampshire in an attempt at a fresh start, and even if her Daddy had been cold-eyed and monosyllabic as they unpacked the boxes in the new house, Ruby had believed it would work. Believed with the absolute trust and faith of a small child.

After last night's shouting match - Mom smashing wine glasses off the kitchen floor, Daddy using words she'd never even heard anyone say aloud, Ruby sitting upstairs with her heart in her mouth - she has to admit its not. It's not working. It’s not going to work.

She barely sleeps that night. Lies awake feeling sick to her stomach, the carefully defined walls of her safe world crumbling around her.

In the morning her mother is grey-faced and snappish. Her father nowhere to be seen. She doesn't ask her mother for a lift to school, walks instead. It'll mean she's late, but she can't bring herself to care.

Its a cold morning, the coldest day of the year so far. Stray snowflakes on the air. A wind that cuts right through her coat and the heavy cableknit cardigan beneath. Leaves and blades of grass cloaked in frost. It's beautiful. Ruby does her best to focus on that, to notice the little details - the patterns of ice on car windshields, the delicate watercolour of the sky above - and to forget last night.

It doesn't work.

As she walks through the school gates and up the drive, Ruby's foot finds a patch of treacherous black ice. Before she can even think to save herself, she's skidding wildly, right foot shooting out from beneath her. She goes down with a scream, her weight landing hard on her hip. The impact shocks the breath from her in a painful rush.

Behind her, two boys from her math class yell, "Timberrr! " and erupt in cackling laughter.

Ruby looks up to see them pass her by, still laughing madly, and its the final straw. To her own horror, she bursts into tears.

It's as though something comes unstuck. She starts and she can't stop. All the tension between her parents - the fear of listening to them scream and slam doors and smash glasses - her anxiety about starting at a new school, keeping her grades up - the exhaustion of that sleepless night - it all comes flooding out, racking her chest as it goes.

She doesn't notice the rolling growl of Anna's motorbike until it's right there, spraying her with grit as it comes to a stop. Two most-certainly-not-regulation boots find the ground inches from where she fell.

"Ruby?"

She doesn't look up. The idea of Anna seeing her like this - sprawled on the ground, ugly-crying - no. It's too humiliating. She can't.

But Anna crouches down, touches her shoulder with a leather-gloved hand. "Sweetie? Are you hurt? Do you need me to call for - "

"No, no, I'm fine, really." Ruby sniffs hard, wipes furiously at her eyes. Looks up into Anna's pale, concerned face, and tries to summon up a smile. "I just fell over, and I've been having a sucky day and, " she takes a deep breath as her voice starts to wobble. She is not going to start crying again in front of Anna. She's _not._

"Oh, sweetie." Anna holds out a hand, and Ruby takes it. Lets the older girl pull her up to her feet. She winces as something in her hip jars and flares with pain, staggers a little. Immediately Anna has a hand at the small of her back, steadying. Ruby imagines she can feel the heat of it even through the glove and her coat.

"There you go, " Anna says. She sounds breathless. "You can walk okay? Great. I'm just gonna park my bike- want a tissue? Here-"

Ruby mops at her running nose, her stinging eyes. Rubs at the ache in her hip. Watches Anna handle her bike, which she sees isn't black after all but a deep deep midnight blue. No doubt Anna, all lazy grace and easy confidence, has never been so dorky as to fall flat on her butt and then start crying about it. Or to lie awake all night worrying about something as childish as her parents splitting up.

When Anna turns back around, she looks at Ruby and frowns. "You sure you're okay?"

Smiling is painful. "It's nothing."

Anna moves to the side, sits down on the bottom of the fire escape steps that climb up the side of the building. "If its bothering you, it's not nothing."

Her gaze is steady on Ruby's face, tawny eyes almost fierce in their regard. There's such an energy to her, looking at her feels like gazing into a furnace. Just the sight of her enough to scorch the skin.

Ruby licks at dry lips. "I'll make you late for first period."

"Oh, that." Anna chuckles low in her throat. "I never go to Religious Studies anyways. Probably Sister Katherine would have a heart attack if I actually showed up."

Ruby blinks. Feels more of a naive child than ever. She's never cut class. Never even pulled a sickie, apart from the day she first got her period.

Still Anna is looking at her. Seriously, she says, "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to, and go ahead if you don't wanna miss class- but as a friend, you look like you could kinda use a break."

And - oh God, the thought of Mr Morgan's trig class - she can't face it. She's tired to the core of her bones, and she can't go in and sit next to Abby and pretend everything is fine and try to make the sines and cosines and tangents resolve into some form of sense. She just can't.

Ruby sits down next to Anna. The metal of the fire escape burns against  the backs of her thighs. Her knee burns where it touches Anna's.

"Be a devil," Anna says, and her smile is blinding.

"I think I'll skip trig," Ruby says, more to herself than to Anna. Half expecting something to be broken when the words leave her lips - the world to stop turning, her parents to pop up from behind the parked cars to stare at her with cold disappointment -

But nothing happens.

Beside her, Anna reaches into the pocket of her biker jacket, pulls out a cigarette and a blood-red lighter. Snaps it, leans into the flame, lifts the cigarette to her lips. Takes a deep drag and exhales long and slow, throat working. She offers it to Ruby, casual, just holding it out wordlessly.

Her parents would kill her if they knew what she was doing. Skipping school to sit next to a biker girl who might be an atheist and is probably a lesbian and definitely smokes - all of it goes against everything they ever taught her. Every rule she’s ever lived her life by.

She takes the cigarette.

When she inhales, it makes her cough, smoke scraping at the roof of her mouth. As she splutters through it, Anna puts a hand, gentle, on her back. Between her shoulderblades. Over her spine. Ruby’s sure she’ll say something mocking when she hands the cigarette back over - something about being a kid, so inexperienced, whatever - but she says nothing.

Silently, Anna smokes. Ruby watches her touch those blushing lips to where her own mouth was only minutes ago. The thought makes her stomach flutter.

For some time they just sit. Every now and then, Anna offers Ruby the cigarette. Sometimes she takes it, sometimes she doesn’t. She’s never known such a calm, comfortable silence.

Eventually, she says, “My parents had a massive fight last night. A horrible one. I think - I think they’re going to split up. For good this time.” Somehow her voice is steady. Her lips feel numb even forming the words.

Anna turns to her, eyes great and sad. “Oh, sweetie, that’s rough, I’m so sorry.”

And just like that, Ruby’s crying again. Because it’s real. It’s all real. Her real life, and she has to somehow _deal_ with it, and she doesn’t know how. Doesn’t know anything but the narrow strip of the world enclosed between the straight rails of her life.

She curls up and presses her face against her knees and buries her hands in her hair. It’s hard to breathe. She’s shaking so hard. Anna puts both arms around her, holds tight. Presses her cheek against the crown of Ruby’s head. Their fingers twine together. And Ruby feels safe.

The walls that defined the limits of her world are crumbling down around her, but Anna is holding her, and she feels safe.

* * *

 

After that, things change and they don’t change.

Anna talks to Ruby more in art class. When they see one another in the corridors, or coming into school in the mornings, Ruby still blushes when Anna waves, but she waves back. She sends Anna snapchats of her art homework, her little black cat curled up in her sock drawer, when the winter dawn looks particularly beautiful - and receives in return selfies when Anna’s playing with dark lipstick and bright eyeshadow, the chocolate cake and muffins she bakes, the books she’s reading. Just little things, but still, they make Ruby smile, every time.

She thinks she feels her heart skip a beat the first time she sends Anna a selfie, and gets the reply: **wow so cute!**

* * *

 

“I can’t believe you, like, actually talk to Anna Milton,” Meg says, sitting in the Masters family living room, working on a group history project. Well, supposedly working. “Aren’t you afraid she’s gonna molest you or something?”

“She’s nice. We’re in art class together, she’s really good. She’s given me a load of tips about oil paints and stuff.” Ruby can’t quite keep the defensiveness from her voice.

Abby smirks. “Watch out. She’s totally in love with you.”

Ruby’s cheeks flame. “She’s nice,” she repeats.

“Yeah, whatever. C’mon, let’s get this finished, I wanna catch up on _Pretty Little Liars_ tonight.”

Ruby doesn’t tell her other friends about her parents. The subject just never comes up.

* * *

 

The thing about oil paints is, they just get everywhere. After she ruins two uniform blouses, Ruby figures enough's enough and brings in an ancient t shirt of her dad's to wear overtop her school things in art class.

When she sees it, Anna's eyes light up, and she grins that grin, transforming her face into a thing of joyous, vital beauty. "You like Led Zep?"

"Er- " she'd half forgotten what was on the shirt. It had seemed far more significant this morning that the shirt was her _father's -_ with all that seemed to imply about her loyalties, her love, her belief - than that it was emblazoned with the four symbols of Page, Plant, Jones and Bonham. "Yeah, I - I mean, I borrowed this off Daddy, but yeah, they're cool." Encouraged by Anna's nod of agreement, she adds, "All that, I don't know what you'd call it, classic rock? I mean, some of it's sleazy, but it's fun. I like it."

"You have good taste." Anna points a paintbrush at her authoritatively. "I approve."

Ruby giggles, trying not to blush.

A few minutes later, Anna looks up from the lino block she's cutting, and says, "Hey Ruby, so me and a couple of friends, we have a band together. Nothing super-serious but we're playing a gig Saturday night, you should totally come."

"You - I mean, I - really? For real?" Ruby's stuttering and can't help it. Can't believe someone like _Anna_ would want someone like _her_ around.

"Sure. It'll be fun." Anna glances down at her work, then up at Ruby through auburn eyelashes, almost shy. "I'd like it if you came along."

For a moment Ruby's caught in her eyes, lost In them. "Yeah. Yeah, I'll come."

* * *

 

Ruby gets dressed and then changes again about three times on Saturday night. Doesn't want to look boring, childish, but doesn't want to seem like she's trying too hard. If only she had an ounce of Lilith's beauty, Abby's glamour, Anna's easy cool. But all she has is herself: small and too sensible for her own good and altogether ordinary.

Finally she settles on blue jeans, black ankleboots and a t shirt with Jimi Hendrix on the front. She tugs her dark hair free from its customary French braid, lets it fall in waves heavy to her shoulders. She still hasn’t figured out how to use eyeliner without making a total mess, but she swipes on a lipstick in a deep red-brown that she bought after Lilith said it’d suit her, and has never yet worn. In the mirror, she looks - like herself, but just a little more so. And that’ll have to be good enough.

As she grabs her jacket from the pegs by the door, her mother calls out, “Where are you going, dear?”

Her stomach clenches. “Out with friends, that’s all.”

“And you’ll be back by ten -” Mom sticks her head around the door and the instant she sees Ruby, her eyes narrow, suspicious. “Is that lipstick you’re wearing? You’re not meeting _boys_ , are you?”

“No, just some girls from school -”

“Are you _sure_?”

“I’m honestly not -” And she isn’t, but she can feel her cheeks starting to heat. She might be abiding by the letter of her parents’ law, but she knows she’s breaking the spirit of it, because - because of reasons she doesn’t quite want to look at head-on. Not yet.

“Ruby, if I find out you’re lying -”

From the dining room comes her father’s voice, dark and roughened. “Jesus Christ, woman, stop projecting. Ruby’s a good girl. She doesn’t lie.”

He’s slurring, very slightly. Ruby’s mother goes white with fury, whips around in a flash of dark hair and blazing eyes. “You -”

Ruby slips out the front door, unnoticed.

* * *

 

She's never been in a club before. The Trumpet & Fiddle is tiny, the walls papered with flyers and stickers, and she has an X marked in Sharpie on the back of both hands so she can't buy anything alcoholic, but still. Her pulse is beating hard in her throat. She's not the youngest person there, or the most conservatively dressed, like she'd feared, but she still feels as though she has a flashing neon sign over her head saying _Doesn't Belong_. 

Ruby edges over to the bar and buys a bottle of Coke, more for something to do with her hands than anything else. The bartender's a young guy with pink hair who calls her _darling_ , and she's starting to put that together with some of the flyers, and she thinks maybe-

Then she catches a glimpse of shockingly red hair, and ducks through the knots of people towards Anna.

Anna's in cherry-red Doc Martens and black leather pants, a lacy cropped top revealing a pierced navel. She's leaning against the wall, chatting animatedly to a dark-haired boy Ruby thinks she recognizes as the guy from school Meg has a crush on. When she spots Ruby, her face lights up and she sweeps Ruby up in a hug so warm and close it's as though they haven't seen each other for years.

"Heya sweetie, I'm so glad you made it - we're on in like ten minutes, you've got awesome timing - oh Cas, this is Ruby, you guys know each other, right? Ruby, this is my cousin Cas -"

This breathless adrenaline-rush of a speech is interrupted by an irate baritone voice yelling, "Goddammit Milton, get your ass up here!"

"Oops," Anna giggles behind her hand, "Dean's gonna eat me, he's always such a drama queen - gotta run - but wish me luck, sweetie?"

"Luck," Ruby says, squeezes Anna's hand as she darts off, blowing them both a kiss. When she's gone, Ruby leans against the wall, takes a big gulp of her Coke. Anna's always kind of intense, but Ruby's never seen her this hyper before. It feels a little like getting hit by a Kansas tornado.

Cas is squinting at her intently. Appraising. As though he's trying to decide whether or not he _approves_ of her. It's an oddly parental expression on the face of a teenager.

He must decide in her favour, because after a moment he says, "Apologies. Anna can be ... excitable ... when she's about to go onstage."

“Yeah - yeah, I got that impression,” Ruby says, still shell-shocked, and then, suddenly, they’re smiling at one another. Cas’s smile is a crooked, angular thing, and in it she can see suddenly the family resemblance.

Cousins. Which means Cas’s uncle is Anna’s too, which makes why she hasn’t been kicked out of school already make a lot more sense. You don’t just expel a Bishop’s niece. Not from Catholic school, at any rate.

And Ruby wonders - wonders about the family that produced Anna, glorying in her self-imposed exile on the sidelines, and Cas, always wound so tight and tense. Wonders if their parents know as little about where they are tonight as Ruby’s do.

It looks for a moment as though Cas is fumbling for something to say, and Ruby tries to think of some non-weird way to say _don’t, don’t worry about it, when people who aren’t talkative try to **make** conversation it’s just awkward, let’s be quiet and comfortable. _Before she can, another redheaded girl, this one shorter and a little older, with overgrown bangs and a pink plaid shirt, appears beside them, hugging Cas from behind with no warning.

“Cas! Where’ve you been hiding? And who’s this?”

“I’m Ruby.” The girl - who introduces herself as Charlie - hugs her, tells her it’s a pretty name, eyes gleaming, and Ruby’s like ninety-five percent sure she’s being flirted at and she’s blushing because she just doesn’t know where to put herself.

“Anna invited her,” Cas tells Charlie repressively, and Ruby thinks she catches a meaningful glance pass between them. Which implies - doesn’t it -?

There isn’t time to think about it. Charlie, unlike Cas, unlike Ruby, is one of those people with the gift of conversation. About music, about their favourite fantasy novels (Charlie: _Dragonriders of Pern_ , Cas: _the Lord of the Rings_ , Ruby: _the Song of the Lioness_ ), the roadtrip she’s planning for the summer, the best places to buy retro video games, the computer science classes she’s taking in college, a seemingly endless array of topics. She’s not flirting anymore, none of that heat in the way she looks at Ruby, and Ruby just relaxes into talking, laughing, feeling as at ease in her skin as she would be if they were sitting in her own back garden.

Then a distorted guitar chord rings out over the PA system, and Cas says, “They’re about to start.” His attention is instantly focused, unblinking, on the stage.

Sure enough, there’s Anna, stagelights making her skin luminous white, her hair blood-red. She’s holding a guitar the same midnight-blue as her motorbike, grinning wildly. Beside her stands Sam Winchester, in a plaid shirt and battered jeans, and on her other side a guy about Charlie’s age, with dirty-blond hair and a pretty face, his Led Zeppelin t-shirt a match to the one Ruby wore to art class last week. There’s a tiny girl with her blonde hair up in pigtails sitting at the drumkit behind them, and as Sam Winchester leans over to whisper something in Anna’s ear, she taps out a _one-two-three-four_ and off they go.

Well, they’re not exactly Jimi Hendrix. They sound like what they are: three reasonably competent high-schoolers and one reasonably competent college boy on a tiny stage in a basement bar. But they play loud and fast and vigorous, and Ruby can feel the music through her feet, in her chest, running through her like electricity. When Anna sings, her voice soaring high and pure over the rough warm baritone of the blond standing next to her, Ruby's heart leaps. Leaps up, carried away by the beauty and the joy of that sound.

She sings along when they cover Led Zep and CCR and the Foo Fighters. Cheers and claps for a couple of original numbers. Thinks for one shining moment that she might cry when Anna sings _Sound of Silence._ Laughs along when they manage to get so hopelessly lost playing _Wherever I May Roam_ that they have to give up and start again. Throws her hands in the air, Charlie's arm around her shoulders. Joins in with the whoops and whistles when, at the end, the blond boy leans forward, out over the stage, grabs Cas by the collar of his shirt and hauls him in, kisses him right there, full on the mouth.

When he's released, Cas steps back, hair rumpled, looking pink and bemused but pleased, his eyes crinkling at the edges, his smile a sliver of naked affection.

Anna blows a kiss into the audience. Ruby doesn't think it's just wishful thinking that it seems to be aimed at her.

She doesn't _think_ so.

As the four of them head offstage, Charlie turns to Cas. "Oh, you and Dean are _too_ adorkable, I can't stand it. Don't ever stop."

Cas just smiles. "We won't."

To Ruby, Charlie says, "They got together two years ago, and I swear the honeymoon's never ended. Hope you're not diabetic."

"I'm not." There are a thousand questions in her mind, none that she can ask. Do people know? Your parents? His? How do you cope? How do you carry this weight, this endless weight of being different? How do you keep it from breaking your back, your heart? Where do you begin?

How do you know? Know when it's not just the love of a friend, but something _more?_

And where do you go from there?

* * *

 

The three of them make for the bar for another round of sodas, but before they can get there, the drummer girl joins them. Her name's Jo, and she's visibly high on adrenaline, flushed, sweaty, but in a natural, attractive sort of way. The way that just makes you look more alive. Before Ruby knows what's happening, Jo takes her hands and pulls her up to dance on a tabletop.

For the first few minutes, she's horribly self-conscious, awkward. How she must look – But Jo has their hands held high, head rocking back, singing along to the music piped over the PA, her body rocking and stuttering, dignity a pointless concern. And Ruby just – she lets go. Gives herself up to the music and the motion.

It's almost hypnotic. Beautiful. She can feel the blood flowing beneath her skin, through her limbs, in her throat, between her legs. Every inch of her.

When Anna joins them, tall in her boots, hair a wild ripple, colour flaring high in her cheeks, it seems only natural. Of _course_ she joins them. Just one more step in the dance, the next chord in the progression.

And there they are, hand in hand – Jo's small and hot, palms slick, Ruby solid and steady, her fingertips always chilly, Anna's fingers long and thin and calloused – moving together. No words needed. No direction. Just the music. And themselves.

It feels endless, that feeling. Beyond time. But then Sam Winchester grabs Jo's ankle for their attention. "Guys, guys. It's nearly eleven, we need to make a move. Jo, you wanted a lift -?"

"Oh, _fine_ ," Jo says, jumps fearlessly down from the table while Ruby thinks _nearly eleven_.

Sam offers her his gigantic hand to help her down, and as she goes she looks at his angular face, the taut tan skin of his forearms, sees his handsomeness. When she's on solid ground, she reaches up to Anna, who beams as she takes her hand, and Ruby could look at her forever. Can see nothing but her. Nothing.

Anna crooks her arm around Ruby's shoulders. Ruby's hand rests in the small of her back. Her heart's beating fast but it's easy, natural.

The blond college-age boy grins at her. "Hey, I don't think we've been introduced, but Anna talks about you all the time –"

"Shut _up_ ," Anna says loudly.

"- and some of it is even good." He winks, laughs when Anna tries to punch his arm. "Sam – you know each other, yeah? – I'm Dean, Sam's brother."

"Oh," Ruby says, and then unthinkingly, "I've heard of you."

Dean's face tenses, and he blushes. Just a little. "Listen, whatever Meg Masters has told you, she's wrong. It actually had _nothing_ to do with devil worship–"

Ruby's eyebrows fly up, and she tells him, "She never mentioned specifics," and everybody else cracks up.

"Oh, shit – _shit_ –well, still, my point stands – I never did any devil worship, and whatever she tells you –"

"Just stop talking," Cas advises.

"Yeah. Yeah, babe." He pulls a face, still blushing, then hides in the curve of Cas's neck. The other boy ruffles his hair, soothing.

"Moving swiftly on," Sam rolls his eyes, claps his hands. "Who're we giving lifts to – Jo, yeah? Charlie, are you – okay. Ruby, do you need –"

"I can give you a ride back," Anna interrupts. Her voice is smooth as anything, but when Ruby looks up at her there's this uncertainty. This nervousness. And she feels a sudden rush of pure fondness, of warmth.

"Yeah, sure," she says, and Anna smiles like the sun coming out from behind clouds.

They head out of the bar – the tattooed girl manning the cloakroom gives Ruby a flyer with a list of upcoming events, and Anna a sly wink – and into the night. The chill hits Ruby like a wall, cutting straight through her hoodie.

"She's freezing," Dean says to Anna reprovingly. "Give her your jacket, where's your sense of chivalry, dude?"

"I'm fine, really. It's okay."

Anna shakes her head, "Hate to admit it, but Dean's right. It gets cold on a bike, here –" She shrugs off her black jacket, the one she wears to school every morning, and drapes it around Ruby's shoulders.

They say their goodbyes – Jo demanding Ruby add her on Facebook, Charlie giving her another hug. As Anna goes to stow her guitar in the trunk of Dean's car, which is an ancient black-and-chrome gas-guzzler of a Chevy, Ruby turns her face into the collar of the jacket. Surreptitiously takes a sniff, inhaling the low scent of Anna, cigarette smoke and oil paint and cherry cola and _her_.

"Hey."

Ruby jumps. Anna's reappeared, now wearing an oversized dark leather coat, which must have come from the car. "Hey."

"Shall we?" Anna leads her over to the motorbike. Hands her a helmet and carefully does up the strap, hands soft against Ruby's throat. Climbs up and tells her to wrap her arms round Anna's waist, and hang on tight.

Ruby presses her face against the broad warmth of Anna's back. Her heart is thudding hard against her ribcage.

Dean sticks his hand out of the window, waves them on. Anna guns the engine and with a roar, they're away.

The noise, the cold – it's shocking. Stunning. The wind seems to cut right through her. The vibration resonating in the marrow of her bones. Alongside them the greasy gleaming neon lights of the city blur into great streaks, comets dancing through the absolute darkness. Ruby's laughing, screaming, her voice snatched away by the wind and the deafening roar of the bike thrumming beneath her, some wild creature she's riding, a dragon about to take flight.

The thought of _eleven o'clock_ , of curfews, of school and what will her parents say, could not be farther away. Blown away in the dust. Lost over the horizon.

She hangs on to Anna, caught between terror and absolute exhilaration, trusting only that Anna will keep them from flying off the edge of the earth to join the angels.

When they come to a stop, it takes Ruby too long to realise they're at the mouth of her own street. She's shaking all over. Anna helps her down from the bike, and she could swear she feels the motion of the planet beneath her feet. The stars are pinpricks overhead, and the darkness around them feels somehow huger than ever before.

"Ruby." Anna's hands rest on her shoulders. Caught by the stark flood of the orange sodium lamp above them, her face is all sharp arches and deep shadows. Entrancing. Her eyes look golden, two flames in the night. Hawk eyes. Wolf eyes. "I want to – can I kiss you?"

Ruby's breath catches. "Yes," she says, and closes her eyes, turns her face up like a prayer.

* * *

 

That night is the first time Ruby breaks curfew. Her parents raise hell over her head, shout at her and each other by turns, and all the while she looks up at them and thinks, _Anna Milton kissed me_ , and cares not at all about anything they say.

* * *

 

Anna texts her crazily cheesy pick-up lines that Ruby suspects she cooks up with Charlie and Dean Winchester. Leaves little doodles, sometimes cartoons, sometimes sketches, sometimes sailor-tattoo designs, on slips of paper in her locker. Ruby returns them with snippets of her favourite poems, handwritten. Sends her links to songs she finds – heavy rock or folksy or even just chart pop – that remind her of red hair and wild gold eyes in the darkness.

On Friday nights they go out to the cinema, accompanied usually by Sam and his girlfriend, a tall blonde named Jess. Ruby puts her head on Anna's bony shoulder, and as fingers gently unravel her French braid she sighs for happiness. Saturdays they go back to the Trumpet & Fiddle for the live music night, and dance and dance and dance. Sometimes Ruby goes over to Anna's house – huge and sumptuous and lonely, the coldness of her parents enough to frost the windows over from the inside.

But together? Together they make it warm. Anna plays her acoustic, shows Ruby how to make a few chords – C and E and A – and to play _Smoke on the Water._ Sometimes Cas and Dean are there, and they jam a little, or just play video games and laugh about nothing. Ruby spends hours stretched out on the rug in Anna's bedroom, the two of them listening to record after record, doing their art homework side-by-side. She loves those hours.

Even more, she loves when they roll toward one another, and as if at some silent telepathic signal, they kiss. Anna's hands cradling her face, Ruby's fingers wound in that mane of hair, soft and warm and tangled deliciously. She loves every flavour of their kisses – from the gentle, the barest touches of lip to lip, to the passionate, all teeth and tongue and fire, Anna pressing her down and Ruby pulling her closer, closer, ever closer.

Kissing on the lips – the cheek – down the throat to where Ruby shakes apart – the elegant line of Anna's collarbone – down further –

The first time Anna shrugs off her torn-up t-shirt, Ruby thinks she might die. Just from that. She can't keep her eyes from all that skin, all that skin exposed for _her_ , and that she gets to _touch_ , she's _allowed_. It can't be real, and yet it is.

And then she unbuttons her own shirt, and Anna's eyes fly wide, her face flushed so she looks as though she's a girl made of fire, and she stutters, all her effortless cool vanished in an instant. For what seems like forever, they just sit there, a chair jammed under Anna's door handle, running hands over the smoothness of each other. Now gentle, now sharp. Soft palms, cherishing every inch, then fingernails riding up to the very edge of pain, arching their backs and pushing into one another, until Ruby's head is swimming, and she feels lost, giddy, drunk on Anna, like she's a contact poison and in Ruby's veins forever.

* * *

 

The winter break comes.

Ruby and her parents are leaving, heading back to New Hampshire to visit her grandparents. Her mother and father seemed to have reached an uneasy kind of truce where neither acknowledges the other expect for the barest, barest minimum. Ruby's dreading the flight, dreading the two weeks spent cooped up with her family, all trapped together, no way out. The only thing keeping her sane at the prospect is the promise of texts and snapchats and Skype calls from Anna, a USB loaded up with new music from Jo and Dean, and Lilith's birthday party when she gets back.

It's not that bad. On paper it's not that bad.

There are no big blow-ups. No fights like the one that had Mom breaking all the wine glasses, or the one after the first time Ruby came home from the Blue Lily at past eleven. Just a lot of veiled comments, sideways glances, pointed questions. Ruby spends it all in a state of high alert, tiptoeing over eggshells. Pretending she's still the girl her Pops and Grandma and Uncle and Auntie remember: straight A's, sensible shoes, nice friends, says her prayers every night, Daddy's perfect little princess.

She's wearing a mask. All the time. She can feel it suffocating her, bit by bit. Moment by moment. Every time her father makes a casual remark designed to bait her mother, every time her mother criticises her father to her, expecting Ruby to agree. Every time Grandma asks her about her friends at school, and do they go to Mass. Every time her uncle and her father talk politics, shaking their heads over gay marriage and what is the world coming to.

She knew this would happen. She knew it. Step outside of those carefully delimited bounds that keep her life intact, keep things easy and plodding along the way they always have before – and everything falls apart.

The walls that kept her safe look like prison bars from here.

* * *

 

Lilith's birthday party is a relief. It's nothing elaborate, nothing grown-up. A pyjama party, a couple of DVDs, popcorn and pizza and a lot of giddy laughter and shrieking as Meg shares the gossip and Abby does everyone's hair and nails and Lilith presides over it all.

They laugh, they swap stories of the numerous ways their families are terrible. They complain about how much work they had to do over the break, can you _believe_ Mrs Lawson set two entire essays? Argue about where the first shopping trip of the year should be, whether Taylor Swift is overrated, did you hear Matthew O'Hara moved to Ohio, who's going to be class president now?

At some point they discover Lilith has the soundtrack to _Grease_ on her phone, and Abby immediately insists on directing them all in a rendition of _Summer Nights_ , complete with dance moves and everything, that gets more and more elaborate until no one can sing for laughing. This is when Lilith's mother comes into the lounge to tell them, harassed-looking, bags under her eyes, that it is one in the morning and some people need to sleep.

And so they all get into their sleeping bags and Lilith turns out the light and they pretend to themselves they're actually going to bed.

The quiet lasts about a minute, and then there's a rustle of covers as Meg props herself up on her elbows. "So, Ruby, who is he?"

"What?"

"Who's your _boyfriend_ , dumbass. You've been texting all night with this sappy look in your eyes, you are definitely dating someone, girl. So spill. I want all the gory details now."

"There's – no-one." It feels like smiling into a slap on the face. Wrong on some deep fundamental basis. It hurts. Deep down in her heart.

"Oh, come on –"

"It's Sam, isn't it? Sam Winchester." Lilith sounds so sure. "He talks to you – and you know that boy's so quiet, he never talks to anyone."

"It's not –"

"We know you like him," she argues. Rolls to the side and leans her head against Ruby's. Ruby can smell the light citrus of her shampoo. "And he _is_ pretty hot. You'd make a cute couple."

"Yeah, I can see it." Abby's lazy smirk is audible in her voice. "He's got the tall-dark-and-handsome thing going on, you're all sweet and wholesome – yeah."

"We're not – honestly. We're not. I don't like him, not like that."

Giggles in the dark. Meg throws something – a piece of candy? – at her, says confidently, "Oh shush. Everyone loves a bad boy, right? C'mon Ruby, it's okay, we're your friends, you can tell us."

"There's no-one," she says, and in the darkness she bites down hard on her knuckles.

* * *

 

"Do your parents know?"

"About me being queer, or about us specifically?"

Hand in hand, they're walking through the park that lies behind Ruby's street. It's a very still midwinter morning, the sky a washed-out, translucent blue, the spidery black fingers of the trees limned in frost. Fresh snow crunching beneath their boots at every step. They could be the only two people in the world. Sometimes Ruby wishes they were.

"Either. Both."

"About us? No – or, I haven't told them. I didn't want to make things complicated for you."

Ruby squeezes Anna's hand, tilts her head to kiss her jacketed shoulder. Feels like a coward.

"But yeah, they've known for a while now that I'm queer. I told them when I was sixteen, shocked the hell out of 'em. Funny story there, actually – I used to go out with Dean."

"Really?" Ruby can't help but to giggle. Once you've seen the two of them together, always picking on one another, half partners in crime and half rivals, it's impossible not to see that they are like brother and sister. Even leaving aside the fact that Dean is so head-over-heels for Cas, the thought of him and Anna, well, it's kind of ridiculous.

"Yeah, yeah, I know." Anna grins, rueful. "We were together for about two years. Broke up when we came out to each other, what a conversation _that_ was, oh my God. So yeah, my parents freaked. I mean, they'd always been like – I'd never been good enough." All the humour is gone from her voice, and she slows to a standstill, toeing at the snow beneath her feet, looking down. "Not clever enough, not polite enough, not Catholic enough. They wanted this, like, peppy little princess, altar girl, homecoming queen, straight A student, play the violin, go to a good school, marry a doctor or a lawyer, two point five kids, whatever."

Anna shrugs sharply, looks up and away. Her profile is sharp, strong, her hair pre-Raphaelite red, burning against the cold sky. She could be carved in marble.

"So, yeah, I told them. And it was the final straw or something. We haven't – I mean, it's fine. I have Cas, I have my friends, I have my other uncle Gabe, it's fine. I've given up giving a fuck about what they think. Can't expect anything from them. It just hurts sometimes, you know?"

Ruby squeezes her hand tight, wraps an arm around her waist and pulls her in. Nuzzles at her cheek and strokes her hair. "Anna – you're amazing. You're beautiful. If they can't see that, it's not your fault. It's not you."

Anna leans into her touch, closes her eyes, sighs heavily. There's a vulnerability in her face that makes Ruby's heart feel like it's breaking. And for the first time she thinks she might understand what it is that makes Anna look so grave, so sad, when her thoughts are elsewhere and she thinks no-one's looking. And it makes Ruby feel this rush, this flood of something fierce and dangerous, a desire to wrap up this girl and keep her safe, to fight anyone who'd try to harm her, tooth and nail, fight them to the death if she had to.

Trembling, Ruby passes a hand over the crown of Anna's head. Strokes her pale cheek. Tells her, "I love you. And we're not going to Hell for that. We're not."

"I know," Anna murmurs, and looks up at Ruby through her auburn eyelashes, and the heat of the adoration in that gaze knocks the air from Ruby's lungs. "No God could send you to Hell, little angel."

Then, as if struck by that thought, she lifts her head, and grins, all sudden and bright. "Come on, let's go make snow angels!"

Ruby laughs, lets herself be pulled into a run, drops to the ground beside Anna, laughing as they sweep their limbs up and down. When Anna sits up to kiss her, she throws a handful of snow into her face, bursting into laughter as it explodes powdery across Anna's shocked face.

"You – oh my God, Ruby, I'm gonna get you for that!"

Then it's on. And they're chasing each other, screaming with laughter, throwing snowballs, trying to stuff snow down the backs of each other's necks, begging for mercy, taking no prisoners and giving no quarter. Anna tackle-hugs Ruby into a snowdrift, pins her down, sitting straddling her hips, smiling smugly. "I win."

"Yeah? What's your prize?"

"You." Anna leans down and kisses her, excruciatingly slow. Her hair hangs down in soft curtains of fire on either side of them. Again that feeling that they are alone in the world, just the two of them, Anna and Ruby. Ruby and Anna.

And yet they aren't.

When Anna breaks the kiss, sits back up, her lips blushing, Ruby says, "I'm going to tell my friends. About us. If you don't mind, I mean."

Anna blinks at her, solemn. "You don’t have to do that for me."

"I know, Anna. I'm doing it for me."

* * *

 

Anna's bed is covered with a quilt the deep blue-black of a clear night sky, stars and constellations picked out across it in gold thread. Lying on it makes Ruby feel as though she's falling, endlessly. Once that might have frightened her.

Lying side by side, they kiss until Ruby can't think. Her leg is hooked over Anna's hips, Anna's hand gripping her thigh, fingers digging possessively in through the denim. She has one hand buried in Anna's hair, holding her head right _there_ so Ruby can bite at her lips, lick at her throat. The other strokes up and down the arc of Anna's spine, counting the knob of every vertebra.

Both shirtless, and the feel of their skin pressing together – intoxicating – and Ruby wants more. More. She reaches up, tugs at the strap of Anna's bra. "Can I? Can we?"

Anna's response is to surge forward and kiss her hard, fingers fumbling open the clasp of Ruby's bra – the moment it takes them to each sit up and fling the underwear to the floor is too long. Ruby's starved of that contact, could die of it.

And then, when they lie back down together, pull each other close, so their breasts press together, she thinks she really will die. The silk-on-silk as their nipples slide together, how the brush of Anna's steel-string-scarred finger over that mound, the gentlest tweak makes her gasp, hips flexing of their own accord as heat lances through her, straight to the heart –

She clutches at Anna's shoulders, her hips, her head. "More, more, please."

Anna grins at her, foxlike, then ducks her head and kisses down her neck. Bites at the just of her collarbone – and Ruby gasps, shocked as always by the undreamt-of jolt of pleasure it brings. Then her mouth is hot and wet on Ruby's breast, biting down, one hand cupping it as she licks and mouths and feasts on her, as if trying to consume her, eat the beating heart that batters against Ruby's ribcage. Ruby would let her.

When Anna rolls Ruby's nipple in her mouth, tugs and suckles and swirls her tongue so the silver of her piercing flicks hot and hard over it, Ruby lets out a noise she didn't know she could make. Long and high and breathy, dragged out from some animal part of her that's been sleeping dormant for sixteen years, a keen that draws an answering moan from Anna that hums and vibrates against her.

"Oh God, oh God, oh God," she can't stop saying it. Rolls over onto her back, tugging Anna with her to lie in a luxuriant sprawl on top of her, hair spilling over her chest and belly like silk. Grips Anna's head, her hair, holding her there, where she bites and kisses and nurses and _loves_ her. Her hips are moving of their own accord, shifting up and down, rocking back and forth to a languid lewd rhythm that no one had to teach her, that's scored on the insides of her bones.

Anna's other hand slides slowly down over Ruby's chest, cups her neglected right breast, weighs it, gives it the lightest of slaps, and Ruby tosses her head, bites out another half-scream. Anna snickers and she _feels_ it. Then her ever-cold fingers are flowing down, down, and push under the waistband of her jeans.

And there they stop.

"Anna – _Anna_." She's in freefall. Thinking, electrified, _she's going to touch me there, she really is_ , and, terrified, _she's going to stop_. The heat Anna's touch has kindled in her chest is spreading, filling her up, flowing down to the centre of her, between her legs, where it has become a forest fire. A furnace.

With a wet popping sound that makes Ruby's hips snap helplessly, Anna lifts off her breast. "Do you want me to do this?" she asks. Her voice is raw, hoarse. Her face is drawn tight with desire, her eyes huge. Hypnotic.

Ruby shakes beneath her. Thinks, _I never thought it could be like this_. "Yes," she says, and then, lost in the fever of Anna, Anna, _Anna_ , she says, "Want you to fuck me. Anna. Please."

Anna moans, wordless, and then both her hands are down there, yanking open the fly of Ruby's jeans, pulling them down as Ruby kicks at them, the two of them uncoordinated, lost in each other. Then, Anna's forehead pressed to the flat of Ruby's chest, the valley between her breasts, she shoves the long clever fingers of her left hand – her fretting hand – into Ruby's panties.

They moan together. Ruby gasping at the touch of cold fingers there, in the very heart of her, the heat of her, Anna dragging out a long exhale. "Oh _God_ , Ruby. You're so wet. So wet."

She can't answer. Can feel it. Slick as Anna's fingers slide over her, pushing between the folds of her. Her hips jerk and rut into the touch. One hand clenches in Anna's hair, the other groping frantically, artlessly, at her own breast. Rubbing thumb and fingers over the teeth marks left in that secret flesh. There are things opening up inside her, forgotten things awakening, stretching, spreading their wings.

Distantly she's aware that she's making some kind of noise. That she's squirming and tossing her head on Anna's starstrewn bedspread, breath hitching. Legs wide open, humping her hips like a slut, but she doesn't care. Can't care. Every nerve in her, every inch of her, is on fire, electrified, alive with pure sensation.

Anna bites down on her belly, anchoring them both as her thumb flicks over and over the sensitive, swollen nub of Ruby's clit. Pushing a tempo and a pace far faster and more brutal than anything Ruby's ever set for herself, driving her forward, up and away, red shoes making her dance until she drops dead. Her other hand stretches upwards, fingers pushing into Ruby's open-gaping mouth, where she sucks on them eagerly, biting and licking at Anna, wanting more, more, ever more.

Without warning, Anna slides a finger inside of her. Pressing smooth and sure _in_ , _in_ , where nothing else has ever – the intrusion is sudden, shocking, sets Ruby arching her back up off the bed, hips jerking up into it. Then another, and she wails helplessly as Anna crooks them, pushing up against her thumb, and the pleasure spikes, sparks across Ruby's vision.

Slowly, agonising, Anna withdraws her fingers as Ruby moans, wails, far beyond words. She can't – Anna can't deny her this, can't take it away – she's so – she's so empty and she never _knew_ –

Then they slam back home. Shoving back inside, hitting something Ruby didn't know was there, sending white-hot pleasure shooting all the way up her spine. She screams, soundless, and Anna does it again, and again, and she can feel herself clenching down, and then there's another finger, straining against the inner walls of her, and she's in freefall, ecstasy like agony sending her over an edge she never knew she could reach and holding her there, holding her, holding her – her body spasms, and she bites the flesh of Anna's thumb in her mouth, digs fingernails into her own nipple, everything rising, opening, bursting into song.

She collapses back down. Body limp. Her legs hanging wide open, eyes open but unseeing. Anna's fingers withdraw from within her, and she sobs in relief and desolation at their loss. The rough pad of her thumb is still gently circling her, chasing the aftershocks up and down her spine. She can feel the wetness of herself, smells it on the air. Against her thigh Anna's hips are jerking frantically, and it's all Ruby can do to lift her leg, brace it against the bed and let Anna rub herself off against her.

When Anna tenses suddenly, and relaxes against her with a sigh, she finally moves her hand, releasing Ruby's clit, just when Ruby thinks she'll lose her mind from too much. Just too _much_. And Anna takes away the fingers that had been tracing Ruby's lips. She's about to protest when they are replaced by the hand that had been busy between her legs. Fingers hot and wet brush over her mouth, and Ruby shudders helplessly.

"Lick 'em clean," Anna tells her, voice low and intent. She nuzzles at Ruby's right breast, teases the hard nipple with her tongue piercing. "Go on, sweetie. Little angel."

Ruby opens her mouth. Sucks them inside. Flicks her tongue tentatively over the skinny length of them. God, the taste – warm and rich and – something she can't describe – some smell that hits her, somewhere primal, animal –

Anna caresses the inside of her mouth. Fingers stroking reverently over the silk of her cheeks, the roof of her mouth, so intimate. There are tears in Ruby's eyes. Anna kisses the delicate skin behind her ears, across her eyelids, her forehead, the tip of her nose. Murmurs, "I love you, I love you, I love you."

Ruby wraps her arms around her, her legs, rocks them. She keeps thinking, _I never knew it could be like this. I'm never going to give this up_.

They fall asleep like that. Curled up. Wound tight together, inseparable. Two halves of a whole, reunited at last.

* * *

 

School on Monday feels surreal. Ruby can't believe everything still looks the same, everyone still acts the same, when from where she is the whole world has changed. She's opened the door of her own cage and she can't ever go back.

On Mondays she shares no classes with Anna. Only sees her briefly, in the corridors, smoking outside with Sam Winchester, the two of them talking animatedly, hands waving as they debate some point or other. Every time Ruby lays eyes on her, it hits her deep in the belly. The memory. The knowledge.

_I love her and she loves me. I've had her fingers buried inside of me up to the knuckles. I've held her as she comes. I've kissed her until the world stops moving._

She spends pretty much the entire day with a stupid smile on her face.

The final class of the day is AP English. As per usual, Sam is sitting at the back, giraffe legs stretched out in the aisle between the rows of desks, constantly making notes and talking in monosyllables at the most. He's really kind of scary intense about schoolwork, she guesses that's why Dean and Jo call him The Boy Wonder. When the end-of-day bell goes, he stops at Ruby's desk on his way out, fingers tapping out a drum fill. "It's Dean's twentieth in a couple weeks, Charlie's trying to organise some surprise thing, you want in on things?"

Very conscious of Abby's intense attention on her, Ruby nods. "Yeah, sure. Inbox me later?"

He nods, gives her a brief flash of dimples, and heads off.

Ruby ignores Abby's triumphant smirk all the way out to the parking lot, where they find Lilith and Meg, giggling over something on Meg's phone.

"I have proof," Abby announces, grabbing Lilith's arm insistently. "It is _definitely_ Sam Winchester."

"Ruby's boyfriend you mean? I _told_ you so -"

"Always the quiet ones, am I right?"

There's a pressure building behind Ruby's eyes. She can feel the mask weighing down on her. Slow suffocation. "Guys, I am _not_ going out with Sam. It is not him."

"No?" Abby raises a perfectly pencilled-in eyebrow, eyes gleaming expectantly. "Then _who_?"

Ruby lifts her chin. Breathes. And says, "Anna. I'm going out with Anna Milton."

Abby stares, blank. Lilith's hand flies to her mouth, eyes wide. Meg giggles, then looks at her again, at Abby and Lilith, at Ruby, and blurts out, "Oh my God, you're _serious_."

Ruby nods. Says nothing. Thinks, _no more smiling when anyone slaps my face_.

After a long, long moment of silence, Lilith says, "I don’t – I'm not saying – that's not really –" she stops. Smoothes down her uniform skirt, and starts again. "But are you _happy_ , Ruby? Can someone like that really make you happy?"

There's a loud whistle. Ruby looks over her shoulder to see Anna, astride her beautiful motorbike, helmet held under her arm. Smiling the alchemical smile that transforms her face, transports it.

"Yeah. Yeah, she does," Ruby says, and then she hefts her bag and runs across the parking lot. Takes Anna's face between her hands and kisses her, soft and sweet.

Anna puts her spare helmet on Ruby, delicately does up the strap, her gloved fingers brushing against the beat of her pulse. At the edge of her jacket collar, Ruby can see the shadow of the hickey she sucked into the curve of Anna's neck. She does up Anna's helmet for her, tugs out the strands of red hair caught in the strap. Swings up into place riding pillion, arms wrapped tight about Anna's waist.

"You ready?"

"Hell yeah," Ruby says, and the engine of the motorbike roars to life beneath her, and together they take flight.


End file.
